Monday, March 30, 2015

I went to an actual movie this weekend. In the theater and everything. It's been many moons since I did that.

I saw It Follows, if you're interested. In spite of the many questions I had -- what exactly happened with the guys on the boat? What was the swimming pool plan supposed to be? Are there specific rules about how the transfer of following happens, I mean, do certain things need to be achieved? If you see it, you'll know what I mean.

In spite of all those questions, I liked it. That conclusion does not seem like it would follow my list of questions, but it does follow that since the movie was set near Detroit in a landscape I recognized, and it did cool things with setting and the sense of time, I would find it eerily familiar. It also follows that, since I can make many puns with the title, I would like it.

Anyway. The point of all this is that a Daily Apple question emerged prior to said watching of said movie. The friend with whom I went to said movie --we'll call him JohnCarpenter -- said, at the conclusion of the trailers, "Wait a minute. They're called trailers, but they show them before the movie. Shouldn't they be called previews instead?"

Good question, JohnCarpenter, says I.

As you might guess, trailers once upon a time were shown after the movie.

Let's start at the beginning.

Long, long ago, back in the silent-era-stone age, before you were even a flicker in your parents' eye, movies used to be shown in a continuous fashion. You'd pay your nickel, walk in and sit down at some point in the cycle. There was a feature film, followed by several short films, including maybe a public service message from the Army or some government entity, a bit of newsreel footage, a cartoon or two, and then the feature film would start up again.

People would come in and sit through the whole loop. Instead of getting up and leaving when they got to the end of the loop, they would stay and watch it all go around again. All for one nickel.

In 1913, various theaters around the country began showing a 13-episode serial movie called The Adventures of Kathlyn. Taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people liked reading serial publications in newspapers and magazines, the release of this film corresponded with the printing of the same installment in the Chicago Tribune.

The idea was that you'd read the episode in the paper and then go see it acted out, or vice versa. Or if you read it one week, you could go see the next episode in the theater the next. Or maybe somebody who read the Tribune would tell you about what they'd just read, and then you'd go see it in the theater. You get the idea.

"the serial detailed the experiences of Kathlyn Hare, the pretty daughter
of an explorer (Lafe McKee). Kathlyn resided in a mythical India,
fighting off unwanted advances from a handsome native, Umballah (Charles
Clary), when not battling an endless array of ferocious jungle fauna." She also befriends native servants and frees the enslaved peoples. Naturally.

Interesting sidenote: the animals used in the filming of this serialized film eventually became the first animals to reside in the then-new Los Angeles Zoo.

Newspaper ad from the Chicago Tribune for The Adventures of Kathryn. It's hard to see at this size, but the ad includes a list of Chicago theaters showing the movie. Eventually, some 200 papers ran the serialized story, and the serialized movie was shown in theaters around the country.(Image from Carole & Co.)

Another innovation about all of this was that at the end of the movie episode for the week, there would a be a scene depicting one of the characters in a cliffhanger of some sort, and then a title card would be laid over the image, inviting patrons to return the following week to see what became of their favorite character. The next week, the movie would pick up with that cliffhanger and proceed from there.

That little teaser at the end of the episode is generally considered to be the first trailer.

At about the same time, the advertising manager for Marcus Loew theaters (yup, still a big name in the movie theater business today) in New York City got an idea. A play called Pleasure Seekers was being performed on Broadway, and he had a short little film made to promote it, including footage of the rehearsals. This was probably the first short film advertising a production, and even though it was for a play, it's still fairly close to what we think of today as a trailer.

This short promo for the play was inserted among that continuous loop of short films & cartoons & newsreels. It fit in very well with all those other supplemental materials, so the theaters throughout the Loews chain started doing that, and soon other theaters did too.

By 1915, movie theaters were making their own short films to promote their feature-length movies. They were pretty basic, with bits from the film spliced together, and maybe a title card at the beginning and end, maybe some text laid over the film.

Below is the trailer for Birth of a Nation (1915), and below that, a montage of several early movie trailers. You'll note that they are all silent movies. That Birth of a Nation trailer sure makes me want to watch it. Lincoln gets shot in it and everything. Except, oh dear, the KKK are the good guys. Boy, it's hard to see them as anything but bad guys now.

As movie-making evolved, incorporating sound and utilizing more complex filming and editing techniques, so too did the trailers. One particular company, the National Screen Service or NSS, made trailers for all the film companies. Even as they used these new techniques, they tended to follow a similar format, since the trailers were all made essentially by the same guy.

Below is the trailer for King Kong (1933). Note the use of the text laid over the scenes from the film, which is a technique from the silent era, but also the use of voice-over specific to the trailer at the end. That is a newer innovation.

By Gone with the Wind (1939), they're still using the text overlay, but now they're interspersing the voice-over telling you how wonderful the picture is, with segments from the movie itself.

As trailers were becoming more advanced, movie theaters were showing more of them more often. Theaters were also moving away from running that continuous loop of one feature film and many short films throughout the day. Now they had a few set times for the film, or maybe they were showing more than one film in the same theater, and they needed to get the audience out in between. The trailers at the end of the film gave people the message: show's over, time to move on.

There is one additional suggestion for the early meaning of the word "trailer," which is a more technical one. Lou Harris, former executive at Paramount, was quoted as saying that the piece of film that contained the trailer was spliced onto the end of the feature film. So it really did "trail" at the end of the movie.

Back in the day, this is essentially how two pieces of film were spliced together -- with tape or glue.(Photo from ULine)

Finding the date when theaters started showing trailers before the feature film rather than after is a little more difficult. Many people say they began making the switch some time in the 1930s.

Film studios tried calling them something other than trailers -- "previews" "prevue of coming attractions" and so on. But it was too late. "Trailers" had stuck.

A few final notes. You might call these trailers:

Trailers are often made while the movie itself is still being made. Sometimes the trailer editors use the rushes -- the first prints made of a day's filming, which may or may not be kept in the final edit. So it sometimes happens that a trailer contains footage or dialogue that isn't in the final version of the film.

In Casablanca's trailer, Rick says, "All right, Major, you asked for it." But he never says that line in the film.

The trailer for Terminator 2: Judgment Day contains several bits & pieces that are not in the movie -- on purpose. Director James Cameron wanted the trailers to explain how the Terminators were made, to address people's skepticism about how he could be in the sequel after he'd been destroyed in the first.

A lot of people say that Jaws (1975) was the first movie whose trailers were shown on TV, but actually the practice started as early as the 1950s. Movie historian Keith Johnston says the first movie to put its trailers on TV was Born Yesterday (1950), starring William Holden and Judy Holliday.

But here's the trailer for Jaws anyway. Because I want you to see how the voice-over has evolved, from telling you how great the movie is to telling you about the movie (though it still seems pretty shlocky). It's also surprising how much of the movie it shows.

Moviegoers from the 1980s and 1990s will remember that nearly every single trailer started with a phrase like, "In a world . . ." or "In a time . . . " It was one guy who did the voice-overs for all those trailers. No, it wasn't Morgan Freeman, it was a guy named Don LaFontaine. Watch this mashup of trailers and be taken back to a time when there were still voice-overs in trailers, along with all the special effects.

Finally, I just want to point out that this entry about trailers was inspired by a movie called It Follows. Do you follow?

Monday, March 23, 2015

I would like you to think about the word "shampoo" for a moment or two. Say it out loud, slowly. Sham poo.

This is the stuff we put in our hair? To clean it? Oh, I don't want the real poo, only the fake poo will do for me. Who came up with this word? Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? And why did we all go along with it?

A word-origins mystery in need of a Daily Apple if ever there was one.

The Oxford English Dictionary folks think that shampoo comes from the Hindi word chāmpo (sometimes it's spelled cāmpo, but the c should have a horizontal line above it, which means the c is pronounced ch).

This Hindi word chāmpo means "to press" as in "to massage."

The OED further elucidates the definition by giving an obsolete definition "as designating a part of the process of a Turkish bath."

Because, you know, India, Turkey, same thing.

An Ayurvedic massage today, including knotted towels soaked in a mixture of rice and warm milk. Perhaps this is similar to the original meaning of chāmpo?(Screenshot from a video showing the entirety of the massage, which begins with a head massage. Warning: once the guy stops talking and the massage starts, it's very hypnotic. From wn.com.)

Reading the instances when the OED found uses of the word in its earliest appearances, it does look as though a bunch of British guys were referring to a practice that was probably massage -- and misspelling the Hindi word in a phonetic English way.

The first instance where they found shampoo being used was from 1762, from a text called Voyage of the East Indies (or something like that; there's a lot of abbreviation). The sentence is "Had I not seen several Chinese merchants shampooed before me, I should have been apprehensive of danger."

Meaning, I suppose, that if a bunch of Chinese guys get shampooed (or chāmpo-ed) and come through it safely, then it must be safe for the British guy, too.

One instance in 1813 actually got the spelling closer to the Hindi: "She [a Mahratta wife] first champoes her husband and fans him to repose; she then champoes the horse."

Ahem.

This sentence, from 1829, gets very specific, and it's clear that what's meant is massage: "In the East Indies, friction with the hand, or what is called champouing, is generally practiced."

Or this one, from 1869, also clearly describes massage: "Shampoeing [sic] may be compared to a gentle kneading of the whole person."

This, going back in time to 1823, is specific, though racially uncomfortable: "We had long ago seen negroes employed in percussion upon their Barbadean masters, by whom it is termed 'Champooing.'"

This one, from Jean A. Owen in a book about Hawaii, where he or she is
talking about Tahiti, where some Hindi people do live: "In Tahiti, too, a
traveler, on entering a house is always given a mat to lie on, and his
weary limbs are shampooed whilst food is prepared for him."

sounds like an especially nice welcome.

"Indian head massage," as practiced by a clinic in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, UK. A depiction of one of the earlier meanings of shampoo?(Photo from Real Ease in the UK)

In other instances, from memoirs of travels to the Indies or letters about trips there and things of that nature, it's not entirely clear what's happening during the ch/shampooing, if it's massage or hair-washing, or what.

Dickens, from Pickwick Papers: "The other shampoo'ed Mr. Winkle with a heavy clothes-brush."

seems more likely that he means the massage definition.

Thackeray, from Vanity Fair: "Pinching the bed-curtains, poking into the feathers, shampooing the mattresses."

since the other two actions involve manual pressure, probably the shampooing does too, but perhaps washing could also be meant.

Here's an even more interesting one, from someone named Haliburton (with one el) in 1838: "So our diplomatists shampoo the English, and put 'em to sleep."

All right, I'll stop with the link-bombing. The point is, I've been doing this here Daily Apple thing for so many years, I've already covered most of the obvious subjects. So I thought it would be a good time to talk about something small, unassuming, often overlooked. Like clover.

Finding a Four-Leaf Clover

What are the odds of finding a four-leaf clover? On your first try: about 10,000 to 1.

Keep trying, though, because apparently the pursuit is not as difficult as it's made out to be. Some people report finding 5, 6, or 7 four-leaf clovers in a single clover-hunting session.

Scientific American estimates that one four-leaf clover should be present in every 1.2 square meters' worth of clover patch. So if you've got a roughly 1-square-meter patch of clover, you'll probably find a 4-leaf one in it.

But 4-leaf clovers have apparently become ho-hum. The real prize to find now is a 5-leaf clover.

You would think this would be even more difficult, but clover-hunters report finding multiple 5-leaved clovers in a single hunting session, too.

Clovers with 6, 7, and 8 leaves have also been found. People have set records finding clovers with as many as 21 and 56 leaves.

21-leaf clover, bred & grown & found in Japan by a farmer named Shigeo Obara. I don't know if it counts as a "find" if you bred it & grew it yourself.(Photo from neatorama)

56-leaf clover, bred & grown & found by that same farmer in Japan, Shigeo Obara.(Photo from National Geographic)

This cloverleaf bounty probably has to do with the fact that plant cultivators have figured out how to breed clover for the recessive gene that produces multi-leaved clovers.

Some tips for looking for the multi-leaf clovers: don't go scrutinizing each one with a magnifying glass. Instead, find a patch of clover, preferably white clover, and cast your gaze slowly over the patch, maybe ruffling the patch gently with your hand, while you look for the shape of 4 leaves -- or 5, or anyway an odd shape that stands out from the rest.

Once you've found one, keep looking in that same patch of clover
because you'll probably find another one nearby. It'll have more brothers & sisters around somewhere.

White clover, identifiable by the presence of the white crescents on the leaves. . . (Photo from Walter Reeves.com)

. . . and the little white ball-shaped flowers, sometimes tinged with pink, that stand up high above the leaves(Photo from Seedland.com)

Speaking of cloverleaf, anybody remember the Cloverleaf in Ann Arbor, before it was downtown, when it used to be out by that Kroger? Ah, the old days.

The Cloverleaf today. Look, it's all downtown and cafe-like and everything. Right on Liberty Street.(Photo from visitypsinow. Which is kind of funny. Because this place is in Ann Arbor.)

Is it a Weed or Is it a Crop?

Many home gardeners think of clover as a weed. It does tend to spread, so people often get frustrated with this and rip it out. And keep ripping it out -- it is rather persistent.

Some farmers, however, have a different opinion.

All those stories about cattle and bunnies loving to graze in the clover are apparently accurate. According to the USDA, clover--especially white clover--is "highly palatable" and "nutritious" for a wide variety of grazing livestock.

You do have to be careful to keep the cattle from standing in the clover all day. Because they'll keep eating it and eating it, and then they'll get the bloat.

As a plant for plant's sake, clover is a legume. Its roots fix nitrogen in the soil, so it helps revitalize the soil. Some farmers even call it a "living mulch," which means just by planting it and letting it grow, it will improve the soil it lives in.

Some farmers use it as cover in the space between crop rows. For example, blueberry farmers in Michigan are discovering the benefits of planting white clover between the rows of blueberry bushes. It doesn't compete with the berry bushes for sunlight, it out-competes other weeds, and it doesn't take much labor to mow it or seed it, since it often re-seeds itself.

Clover is also traffic-resistant. This means you can walk on it, and you won't kill it. It won't survive a lot of heavy livestock grazing, or a ton of foot traffic all the time, but it's also not so sensitive you have to avoid walking on it.

Bees love clover. If you've got clover planted among your other crops that you want the bees to visit, the clover will act like a "POLLEN HERE" sign to the bees, and while they're there, they'll stop by your other plants and pollinate those too.

I am embarrassed to admit this, but in listening to Obama's speech and in reading journalists' comments on it, I don't know what "Bloody Sunday" refers to. I hear that and I think of the Troubles in Ireland (such a nice, delicate way of describing centuries' worth of Catholic vs. Protestant bombings and murders).

But of course I know that these speeches about Selma, Alabama, can't be talking about Ireland, that they mean events that took place during the civil rights protests in 1965. But that's about all I know.

So what did happen in Selma, Alabama in 1965? And to give me a place to start, why Selma?

Now that I've read the whole story, I see how this Life magazine cover photo pretty much says it all. The two guys in front of the two-by-two column of people are Hosea Williams (L) and John Lewis (R).(Life cover image from Successimg.com)

The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. That was supposed to stop people and communities from discriminating against other people on the basis of race or color or sex or religion or national origin. One of the ways people weren't supposed to be discriminated against was in matters related to voting. But in fact, even though the nation-wide law of the land forbade it, many communities were still preventing people -- mainly African Americans -- from voting.

One of the places where this was happening most egregiously was in Selma, Alabama. Some sources say only 2 percent of Selma's eligible black voters were registered to vote; other sources say less than 1 percent.

Selma was the county seat of Dallas County and the county sheriff, Jim Clark, had been very vocal in his opposition to blacks being allowed to vote. He went around wearing a button that said "Never," meaning never allow black people to vote. At one voting rights demonstration, he rounded up all the protestors using cattle prods and forced them to march faster and faster until a number of the protestors vomited.

He was friends with people in the KKK, and he organized a posse -- literally, a posse -- of KKK members alongside police officers to stand around in front of places where black people were going to register to vote. His posse guys were also armed with billy clubs and cattle prods.

African Americans who had shown up to these registration drives either to register or to demonstrate and encourage others to vote were harassed, shouted at, threatened, or beaten.

There were two locally-organized groups that were trying to prevail in spite of this neanderthal. These two groups were called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

It was around this time that Dr. Martin Luther King was informed of what was happening in Selma. He supported both groups' efforts and encouraged them to continue to conduct nonviolent protests against the practices of Jim Clark et al., to draw national attention to the problem, and to raise national awareness about the fact that people were still being kept from voting.

Many of the demonstrations that the groups held, which took place in January and February of 1965, were conducted outside the Dallas County Courthouse. They were trying to bring the problem literally to the steps of the courthouse, which was supposed to uphold the Civil Rights Act, but was not.

During one of these demonstrations, on February 17, sheriff Clark and his men, who were also joined by state troopers sent to Selma by Governor Wallace, decided to break up the march by beating the men and women who had assembled with their billy clubs. This was nothing new, really. They had responded to other demonstrations in similarly violent ways.

On this particular evening, some of the demonstrators tried to get away from the troopers with clubs by running into a cafe. But the troopers followed them in and started whaling on an older man, someone's grandfather. His daughter rushed to the man's aid, and the trooper knocked her down. Then her son, Jimmy Lee Jackson, stepped in and tried to protect his mother from being hit some more. The state trooper responded by pulling out his gun and shooting Jackson, point-blank, in the abdomen.

Jackson, a 26 year-old church deacon, died of his wounds eight days later.

One of the organizers of the SCLC, Reverend James Bevell, said they should take the body of Jimmy Lee Jackson in a funeral cortege all the way to the state capitol, Montgomery, to show the state of Alabama and the country at large what had happened. In discussing this idea and planning how to make it happen, they decided it should be a march from Selma to Montgomery.

The First Attempt -- Bloody Sunday

Map showing the road -- Highway 80 -- from Selma, AL to the state capital, Montgomery.

This is what the first march looked like, coming over the bridge from Selma, led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams.(Photo sourced from crmvet.org)

On March 7, led by the SNCC and the SCLC, some 600 people gathered at a church in downtown Selma, knelt together in prayer, and then began their march walking two-by-two through Selma, intending to go all the way to Montgomery, which is about 50 miles away.

The road from Selma to Montgomery goes south out of Selma before it cuts east. The southern edge of Selma is bounded by the Alabama River. The bridge going over the river is the Edmund Pettus Bridge. So essentially, once you cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River, you're outside Selma, with about 49 1/2 miles to go to Montgomery.

The 600 marchers made it as far as this bridge when they were confronted by a blockade of sheriff Clark's men and his stupid posse and state troopers sent there by Governor Wallace. I cannot believe, in 1965, there was a freakin' posse. But there was.

The troopers and policemen and the KKK whatnots were armed with billy clubs and bullwhips, and they were wearing gas masks. In other words, they showed up ready for a fight.

A state trooper named Major Cloud got on his bullhorn and told the marchers that this was the end of their demonstration, that it was unlawful, and they had two minutes to disperse.

Well, it wasn't unlawful at all. So the marchers did not disperse. They didn't do anything else, either. They didn't rush forward or do anything threatening. They just continued to stand there.

But this apparently was unacceptable to Major Cloud because he gave the order to the troopers to advance, and they did. They pushed their mass of people into the two-by-two line of marchers and pushed them down like a steamshovel knocking down bowling pins. And then they started hitting people.

They beat people -- men and women -- with their billy clubs. They released their tear gas and clouds of it were everywhere. It was pretty much a nightmare.

Tear gas canisters all up the road in Selma(Photo sourced from crmvet.org)

Multiple people were beaten, in the head, in the face, on the back. They walked away with bloodied faces and broken noses. One of the fifty-eight people beaten severely enough they had to be treated at a local hospital was John Lewis, chairman of the SNCC. His skull was fractured.

Here is an excerpt from his testimony given in a federal hearing following this march. The guy questioning him is an attorney.

Lewis: I was hit on my head right here.
Hall: What were you hit with?
Lewis: I was hit with a billy club, and I saw the State Trooper that hit me.
Hall: How many times were you hit?
Lewis: I was hit twice, once when I was lying down and was attempting to get up.
Hall: Do we understand you to say were hit . . . and then attempted to get up
and were hit—and was hit again.
Lewis: Right.

John Lewis, one of the leaders of the first march, shown here in the foreground in the light overcoat.(Photo from Raceandpoverty.org)

Hosea Williams, the guy who co-led the first march with John Lewis. The photo was taken probably ten years or so later, when Williams held various political positions in Georgia.(Photo from the New Georgia Encyclopedia)

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Frank Johnson, Jr., ruled that the demonstrators had a
constitutional right to march. Which means the troopers and Clark and all the rest of those hooligans in uniform had no right to do what they did.

All this might have passed by the notice of most people in the country, making it only in a few newspapers, except that cameramen from TV news stations were there and filmed the whole thing. So it was broadcast on TV news around the country. And people across the country who saw this footage were horrified.

I found some of this footage so you could see it for yourself.

This is an excerpt from some historical documentary, beginning with a description of what was happening in Selma leading up to Bloody Sunday. The guy pointing his billy club at the camera is Sheriff Jim Clark. Toward the end is footage from Bloody Sunday itself.

The first 3 minutes of this video show, without commentary, some of the footage from Blood Sunday.

Dr. King was sending out telegrams and press releases and public statements, decrying the response of law enforcement, and calling on religious leaders across the country to join their cause. They would try their march again, he said, and the more people who would join their nonviolent demonstration, the better.

That same judge who said their first march was lawful told Dr. King he was going to issue a restraining order to prevent the march from going forward, at least for a few more days, until March 11. He wanted enough time for a federal court order to go through so that a different batch of lawmen could be dispatched to Selma to provide protection for the marchers against Clark et al.

Dr. King sort of did and sort of did not do what the judge said.

The Second March -- March 9

Two days after Bloody Sunday, somewhat against the orders of the judge, Dr. King led 2,000 plus people -- note that the number more than tripled in two days -- as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There, they stopped and knelt to pray. Then they turned and went back to Selma.

The troopers were still there, at the far side of the bridge. By not crossing the bridge, the marchers did not antagonize the troopers. But they also did not back down from their own decision to make some sort of demonstration. And it was peaceful.

At some point on this day, King gave a speech which included the statement, "I would rather die on the highways of Alabama, than make a butchery of my conscience." Strong stuff, Dr. King.

By this time, President Lyndon Johnson was very well aware of everything that was going on. He promised, in the wake of the second march, to introduce legislation that would specifically guarantee voting rights, and that he would do so within a matter of days.

A white Unitarian minister named James Reeb was one of hundreds of people who had seen the coverage of Bloody Sunday on TV and who flew to Selma to participate in the demonstrations. The night of March 9, he and two other Unitarian ministers were eating in a restaurant in Selma that served both whites and blacks. After they left that restaurant, they were walking back to a meeting that would be led by Dr. King when they were attacked by "local whites."

Reeb was beaten severely in the head with a club. Somehow, it was several hours before he was brought to a hospital in Birmingham, where doctors performed brain surgery. But to no avail. The Unitarian minister, born in Kansas and ministering in Boston, died two days later. He was 38 years old.

Reeb's death galvanized many more people in the country. If those "local whites" in Selma would kill a white man over this race thing, clearly they were way out of line.

(You still see this sort of thing in movies all the time. The black sidekick gets killed, because he's expendable, and this is what spurs the white hero into action. Or a bunch of black guys in the background get shot, but it's only when one of the white guys who actually has a speaking part gets wounded that the white hero really gets ticked off and starts kicking ass and taking names. We've still got a long way to go.)

All sorts of things started happening. Johnson addressed Congress, saying, "Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but
really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of
bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome." More importantly, he submitted his voting rights legislation to Congress on March 17.

The Selma demonstrators submitted a detailed plan, describing their plans to march from Selma to Montgomery, to that judge, Frank Johnson, Jr., and he approved it. He then called up Governor Wallace and asked him to call off his dogs -- er, troopers. But to be on the safe side, the federal government also sent hundreds of Alabama National Guardsman to protect the marchers.

The Third Time's the Charm

The third march set out on March 21. This time, there were 3,200 people. Some sources say there were 8,000, but the judge said they had to limit the
number to 300 people at a time marching along the two-lane highway. This time, they were protected by National Guardsmen and members of the FBI.

They walked from Selma to Montgomery, covering anywhere from 7 to 17 miles per day. They camped out at night on land belonging to people sympathetic to the demonstration. By the time they got to Montgomery, the number of marchers had greatly expanded to some 25,000 people.

What the third march looked like, coming into Montgomery(Photo sourced from Jacobin Magazine)

They reached he capitol building four days later, on March 25. Dr. King delivered a speech on the steps of the capitol building. It was here that he said the following:

"I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" (Speak, sir)
Somebody's asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men,
darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred
throne?" Somebody's asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate
on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the
South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the
children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope
be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, (Speak,
speak, speak) plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the
manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth
bear it?" (Yes, sir) I come to say to you this afternoon, however
difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will
not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again."
(Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live
forever." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because
"you shall reap what you sow." (Yes, sir)"

"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Aerial photo of the demonstrators gathered in front of the capitol building in Montgomery.

After this speech, a delegation from the marchers tried to deliver a petition to Governor Wallace. The doors of the capitol were blocked by -- who else? -- a line of state troopers. The delegation asked that the petition be delivered to the governor. They were told that the governor was not in. They remained on the steps with the petition until one of the governor's secretaries came out and collected the petition.

Five months later, on August 6, President Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As he signed this bill into law, he called the right to vote "the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down
injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because
they are different from other men." (and women too, I would add)

But It's Still Not Over

Although the march was ultimately successful in helping to secure a voting rights law for the entire country, and in bringing to the eyes of people across the nation the extent of violence that some bigoted people were willing to go to in order to protect their narrow-mindedness, this wasn't the end of the story.

The same night that the marchers arrived in Montgomery, there was yet
another murder. A housewife from Detroit, Viola Liuzzo, who had also seen the news
about Bloody Sunday on TV and who came down to Selma to march in
support, was driving a fellow marcher, an African-American teenager
named Leroy Moton, back from Montgomery to Selma.

She was driving him along Highway 80 when another car pulled up next to theirs and, I think while both cars were still driving, a passenger in the other car pulled out a gun and shot at her. The bullet struck her in the face. She lost control of the car, understandably since she was probably dead at that point, and the car went into a ditch and crashed.

The guys in the car stopped and got out and would have killed Leroy Moton too, except he pretended to be dead.

Viola Liuzzo, one of the marchers from Selma to Montgomery, originally from Detroit, killed for giving a black teen-ager a ride home.(AP photo from NPR)

Three of the 4 guys in the car were members of the KKK. The fourth guy was also a KKK member, but he had turned FBI informant. The next day, the three KKK guys were arrested. (Why, why why did the informant guy let it get to the point where someone got killed?)

The three KKK guys were tried, but of course, since the dead person was a woman, they had to say it was all her fault. People testified at the trial that Viola was a Communist sympathizer (her second husband was a member of the Teamsters, and she herself was a member of the NAACP), that she had gone to Selma to have sex with black men, that she was a drug addict. The old trick of making the victim look guilty, and when the victim is a woman, they call her a slut.

The KKK members were all acquitted by an all-white jury.

There was another trial years later, on federal charges. Two of the 3 guys were convicted and sentenced to 10 years. The third guy died before he could be sentenced. The two guys in prison later said it was the informer who did the shooting, but it was too late. The informer had been granted immunity, so things were left as-is.

In the meantime, Viola's family were sent letters filled with phrases like "N---r-lover". Her children were called "N---r lover's baby" and had rocks thrown at them. Ladies' Home Journal polled its readers, asking them what they thought of Viola, and the majority said she was not a good mother, should have stayed home, and minded her own business. Her husband became an alcoholic and died. Her children suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

I'm getting a little off-track here, because I'm getting incensed.

It wasn't only Viola and her family who continued to suffer despite the eventual successes of the march from Selma to Montgomery. As we've all seen more recently, in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, in Ferguson, Missouri, in the Eric Garner case in New York City, too many African Americans are still suffering violent acts perpetrated against them because of racism and bigotry. We as a country have made some improvements since slavery, and since 1965. But we still have a long way to go.

Here's another bit of proof of that: about 4,000 bags, each containing a rock and a KKK flyer, were thrown onto the doorsteps of houses throughout Selma on the 50th anniversary of the march to Montgomery. The fliers contained all sorts of "statistics" (a.k.a. bullshit) about the likelihood of this or that non-white race to commit this or that type of crime.

Robert Jones, the grand dragon of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK said to a reporter from the AP, "We pretty much put out fliers, some against King and some against
immigration. It's time for the American people to wake up
to these falsehoods that they preach about MLK."

He was also hoping the fliers would attract new members. "The Klan is still out there and we are watching," Jones said.

Makes me sick.

The Moral of the Story

Vote. People died for your right to vote. Not just in the Revolutionary War, not just in the Civil War, but only a few decades ago. And the struggle continues today.

Very few countries in the world allow its entire citizenry to vote, and even fewer have fair and not-rigged elections. This is a right that everyone should have, but very few people in this world have it. We--all of us in this country--do have the right to vote. It is an enormous privilege, hard-won by the lives of countless people who came before you.

The first and best way to make your voice heard is to vote. If you're still not satisfied, get people together and demonstrate -- peacefully. Show people what the problem is and present them with a solution. If you get enough people to see the wrong that's being done, sooner or later, the rest of us will hear you. And in this country, as President Obama said in his speech, we are committed to improving our laws and ourselves so that everyone will one day be treated fairly. As we all know deep down everyone should be treated. And the KKK be damned.

Today, John Lewis is a member of the House of Representatives, and currently serves as Senior Chief Deputy Whip for the Democratic Party. Know how he got there? Votes.(Photo from John Lewis's Congressional page)

Blogs I Like

Sitemeter

About Advertising

In compliance with an FTC rule, I'm letting you know that I don't get any free products or swag from any advertisers. Occasionally I'll insert links to products available for purchase from Amazon. In the 9 years I've been doing this blog, I have made a grand total of $21 from people clicking on those links and every once in a great while purchasing something from Amazon. That's it.